Note: this thread has been sitting in our staff forum for about two weeks now. Sorry for the delay in getting it out, we were waiting for the public results of Sauce's contest. You're all winners in our book, and it would be a crying shame if only one map was officialized over any equally worthy others.
SF desperately needs maps and good mappers. We've had some great submissions and almost all of us have played, well, all of them.
A good mod has a long and colorful maplist, offering plenty of variety for the players. SF offers a unique mapping challenge. Map too much, and there's nothing to build. Map too little, and teams either can't build enough, or games get boring and predictable. It's a fine balance, and none too hard to get right. I can say with genuine confidence that building a successful SF map is quite a difficult art indeed. My own (quite flawed) strategy is usually to try something outlandish and hope it's fun. These mappers that follow have put a large amount of time and effort into their creations, and before I say anything else I'd like to acknowledge that input. Mapping takes time, dedication, and skill. The SF dev team and community is indebted to the mapping community for providing us with new and exciting arenas in which to build our myriad forts.
We recently had a number of submissions to a themed map battle, organized by Sauce and others, to whom the community owes a great deal of thanks for pulling everyone together and getting mappers to step up and not only produce a map for SF, but one that matched a separate and particularly difficult first theme: water. Now Sauce and the other judges may have physical prize in mind, I'm not sure what's happening there, but there is a completely separate prize that myself and the development team can offer. That is of course the inclusion of maps into the next SourceForts installer. In this thread, I'd like to present my initial reactions to each map, and hopefully come back with some genuine answers from the rest of the team as to which maps we'll pick out for inclusion. (Another quick note, if you don't want a map you've created to be included in the SF2 installer, please let me know, and give me a chance to convince you to change your mind.)
I've taken an in-depth look at each map submitted to the map battle. These maps were:
sf_island by mudkip
sf_manywaters by manywaters
sf_waterbend by norhart
sf_tacwater by commander
sf_watercanal by alingrad
What follows are my quick notes and reactions as I played each of these maps, walking through the level alone or in pub games. I took into consideration overall performance, elegance in design and optimization, possible bugs or flaws, gameplay flow and balance, and a host of other influences to numerous to list. Without further ado, the maps:
map: sf_island author: mudkip filesize: 14.4 meg
Beautiful thematic brushwork throughout the level, eroded ruins theme exists without overly complicated geometry or lack of fort building area. Map uses many displacements but unused displacement surface (interpenetration) is minimized, blue spawn stairs are slightly unwieldy but usable, blue block spawner difficult to immediately locate, as it's buried in shadows. The map features aggressive shadowing, but it seems to compliment the overall theme. Good use of teamcolored lighting in underground sections. No occulsion volumes within the displacement terrain, but default vis optimization hides the underground tunnels. Compresses well.
verdict: inclusion
map: sf_manywaters author: manywaters filesize: 6.14 meg
clear castle/fort theme, good use of lighting in spawn rooms - spawn rooms may be a little too small. Rain causes strain on the swap buffer and framerate dips, but it's not unplayable. Problems with water reflections - rebuilt cubemaps to attempt to solve, may be caused by water brush at an angle (the refract shaders only operate on horizontal brushes). Several small chokepoints in map, though would likely be negated by large ramps each team would build. May suffer from 'build a big ramp' syndrome, but is enjoyable nonetheless. Dispite small errors, effort put into brushwork and environment is very clear.
verdict: inclusion
map: sf_waterbend author: norhart filesize: 7.48 meg
Extreme framerate degradation. Swap buffer causing significant frame lag. You can unfreeze through the build wall. I'll come back for a second look when this map is updated.
verdict: exclusion for the time being.
map: sf_tacwater author: commander filesize: 5.63 meg
A beautiful combination of brushwork and displacements, clever entity placement and lighting. Vis optimized areas and detailed geometry. A clear candidate.
verdict: inclusion
map: sf_watercanal author: alingrad filesize: 1.46 meg
First test, got stuck in the spawn door, had to commit suicide. spawns don't face the exit, disorientation on spawn. Buttons recess into the wall when pressed, causing nearby buttons to be pressed unintentionally. spawns feature no nofreeze zones. Dual bridge design facilitates unique and interesting gameplay, though. There is no ceiling nofreeze. A very good candidate, but only after some fixes.
verdict: exclusion for the time being.
A note to the authors: Have an updated version of the map? Better yet, have the .vmf? Please consider making either or both available to the development team so we have the option of updating your map as the 2.0 entity set grows.
Map battle 1 installer package inclusion
Hybrid Mode
